N.J. Comptroller: Pay-to-play law is 'fair and open in name only'

Patti Sapone/The Star-LedgerNew NJ State Comptroller Matt Boxer and ELEC executive director Jeffrey Brindle hold a press conference to detail the inadequacies of the state's pay-to-play law in Trenton.

TRENTON — New Jersey’s pay-to-play law is "fatally flawed" and has done little to prevent local politicians from rewarding their campaign donors with lucrative city contracts, State Comptroller Matthew Boxer said Thursday.

"It simply does not work," Boxer said during a news conference where he released a 20-page report that blasted the law for being toothless.

The report says local governments are exploiting a huge loophole in the 2004 law, which allows them to award contracts to any vendor — regardless of how much money they contribute to candidates — as long as they use a "fair and open" decision-making process.

The problem, Boxer said, is "fair and open" could mean anything.

Local officials do have to submit written requirements to all interested bidders, but there is no way to verify if those criteria are appropriate, if they are applied fairly, or if they are even used, he noted.

"It is ‘fair and open’ in name only," Boxer said. "They are regulating themselves."

The comptroller’s office reviewed contracts handed out by dozens of local governments, and found at least three had no uniform system for choosing winners.They were Hoboken, Ridgefield and Edgewater.

One Edgewater official said it didn’t use formal criteria because "none was required by law, rule, or regulation," according to the report.

The rules are much stricter at the state level, since any political donation of at least $300 automatically disqualifies a vendor from receiving state contracts. Boxer, along with Election Law Enforcement Commission Executive Director Jeffrey Brindle, is asking lawmakers to replicate that system at the local level.

Gov. Chris Christie is already on board with the idea, said his spokesman, Michael Drewniak.

"We must expand pay-to-play laws to all levels of government and stop this corrosive, corrupting process involving local contracts," Drewniak said. "Governor Christie proposed an ethics reform package last September to close this very loophole, among numerous other reforms, in a rigorous and comprehensive way."

The report was issued just one day after contractor Nicholas Mazzocchi told a federal court in Trenton that bribes and political contributions are key to getting contracts from towns. In the federal corruption trial of Newark Deputy Mayor Ronald Salahuddin, Mazzocchi said towns "can throw out all the bids out and re-bid it until their favorite son gets the job."

Chris Donnelly, a spokesman for Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), said senators "welcome the report and take its recommendations seriously," but added that the Senate’s priority now is stimulating the economy and reducing the state’s 9.4 percent unemployment rate.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who has been calling for pay-to-play reform for several years, said she was not surprised by Boxer’s findings.

"It didn’t tell me anything I don’t know," she said. "We should tighten up the laws, and hopefully this report will help us come together in a bipartisan fashion."

Brindle is also calling on legislators to expand the number of contractors that have to file annual reports with ELEC. Only vendors who win contracts worth $50,000 or more have to file the reports; Brindle would lower the amount to $17,500.

By Jarrett Renshaw and Salvador Rizzo/The Star-Ledger

A previous version of the story incorrectly said the comptroller's office declined to name the local government's reviewed by his office. While the report did not identify the locations, but his office was willing to identify them publically. A previous version also incorrectly stated that his office reviewed the contract policies of three local governments. The office reviewed dozens of local governments.